I tilted my head as I danced toward Raymond. “Like my dress?” I asked, grabbing handfuls of the fabric and twisting this way and that. “It’s my funeral dress,” I stated demurely. “Thought it would be fitting.”
I pinned him with a beatific smile. “I figured I would wear it tonight to forebode your little family reunion. I’m sentimental like that.”
His face fell briefly, but it quickly hardened with anger.
“How dare you, little bitch,” he spat, closing the space between us. I held my ground, unwavering, only tilting my head so I could assess his face hovering too close to me. “Who are you to speak of an heir's death?” he spat.
I retrieved my dagger without breaking his gaze, got on my tip toes and leaned forward, pressing the tip of it against his throat.
I recoiled at the proximity, but I reveled in the breath stolen from him.
I whispered as close to his ear as I could. “I was responsible for their deaths, so I may speak on it.” I slipped something wrapped tightly into his pocket.
He pulled back laughing, but I grasped him by his stupid fucking button-down, shaking him so he looked at me.
My face was impassive cool, and his was anything but.
“Check your pocket,” I whispered, taking a step back.
He froze for a second in anger and disbelief.
I waved a gloved hand at him. “Go on.” I feigned boredom as I studied my dagger in the dim sunlight, polishing it with my gloved fingers even though there were no marks.
Ezra had it perfect, and I fought a smile, pushing down the still strange butterflies that accompanied thoughts of him.
His eyes slit, but he fumbled in his pocket and eventually pulled out the handkerchief. I clamped down on my disgust, forcing myself not to react to the whisper of the scent I had engraved in my memory.
His hands shook as he looked down into the white handkerchief stained with his son's blood. He glared at me, his anger palpable. It seemed he would be quicker to believe than his mate, and that was a relief.
“No,” he whispered, looking back down at it.
When he looked back up at me, a hard rage settled on his face. He had accepted the truth far sooner than his mate did.
“No!” he shouted, but his voice broke, and he attempted to lunge at me.
I moved to sidestep him, but he remembered himself first. He stumbled, struggling to right himself.
“I don’t believe you,” he spat before he was fully back on his feet.
I lifted a shoulder. “Your mate didn’t either.” My face twisted into an impassive frown, flipping my dagger in my hand. “But I guess that’s because I played my role so well.”
I met his eyes; my rage filled them, but my half-smile was anything but impassive. “You wrote me off as someone who needed protection.”
I closed the space between us, raising my chin to meet his stare. “But I was the one you needed protection from.”
His face twisted into abhorrent disgust, but there was a hint of something in his eyes that told me he still wouldn’t let himself fully believe me.
Self-preservation or ignorance it didn’t matter.
His end would be the same.
“The others should be almost entirely thawed now,” I mentioned, glancing at my nails impassively. “Those in the river.” I frowned. “I will admit it was tricky deciding where to place them, but I knew that their decay would take longer during winter, and it would buy me some time.”
I brushed past him. He was frozen for a moment before he twisted to try to face me.
I started a slow circle around him, gaining complete control. It was a beautiful thing. I knew this would make a great show.
But more than that, this was the position, the hold I always pictured I would have on him. Every time he made comments about me or my family and I had to swallow them, I pictured this moment.
When he would be forced to submit to me. When I would get to tell him everything I had done to hurt him. When I could reveal just how poorly he messed up.
“The visiting Alphas son, who had his throat slit right past where the new house met the old.” I pursed my lips, glancing at him.
“Dominick with a sword through his chest, in the part of the maze blocked from the audience.” I gave him a look that I hoped seemed sympathetic, even though I felt anything but.
My rage crackled at my words, at the memory of the wrongs I had righted myself.
“Hunter, though, might have been the most satisfying,” I admitted with a hollow laugh. “But at least you still have a piece of him.” Raymond clutched tighter to his son’s finger in the handkerchief. I had almost completed my circle around him, he hung on my every word.
I didn’t know how much the audience heard, and if I were smarter, I wouldn’t have admitted to so much seemingly undue bloodshed.
But this was the entire purpose of my life now. All that I had planned coming to fruition.
His face was almost a shade of purple, but I knew he was hanging on my words, trying to find something that would make my pretty little speech false.
But he wouldn’t.
And I think he knew that well before he let himself believe it.
I paused standing back where I started, folding my hands demurely. “But it had to be done, you see. I had to start to repay a blood debt….” I cocked my head, picking at my nails with the dagger. “That was owed to you.”
His mouth was a hard, thin line, but his eyes flickered between black.
“Are you ready now?” I asked him.
I lifted up my dress and unstrapped my dagger holder.
I searched for Ezra in the crowd, and he stepped forward, hands outstretched. I walked towards him, adrenaline pumping now mixed with the heady bloodlust.
“Do you mind?” I asked. My voice was my own again, but it was small and choked as I held out my dagger and leather straps.
Ezra met my gaze, dropping his mercenary stare for me only. “I will hold this until you are done,” he said.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“Always,” he promised. I wanted to crumple into his arms, but we both had a role to play.
Raymond was looking dumbfounded between Ezra and I. Ezra didn’t even look his way before he faded back into the crowd.
“Shall we, Raymond?” I drawled, twisting my braid into a tight bun.
“I, we,” he stammered, his eyes blazed as he stepped towards me. “Who are you,” he demanded.
“You know you I am.” I stood tall, my voice rang clear and rippled with power “I am the heir of The Blood Moon pack, one of the oldest packs broken from The Moon Goddesses original pack.”
“I am the daughter of Alpha Christian and Luna Lilian.” I stepped toward him.
My rage lapped up, and I let it roam free.
I lowered my voice. “I am death.” I met his eyes. “I am vengeance..”
He balked, sneering down at me, but I could smell his fear. It mixed with my anger, and I felt it become a living thing. It hardened around me like armor.
“You should not kept me alive,” I spat, the fiery vengeance flickered with each word. “Then your sons would have still been debasing these lands.”
The fire within me took hold, but I was its master now.
His eyes widened, and a thousand emotions flickered across his face. He decided to settle on one he knew well - anger.
He huffed, clinging onto the last bit of desperate hope he had that his entire downfall could have been stopped by killing one, in his eyes, pathetic child.
Shattered glass and a delectable loud pop. I closed my eyes and reveled in the timing of it. The Moon Goddess must be trying to claw her way back into my good graces.
Raymond clutched his chest as he fell hard to his knees.
I grasped his shoulder and leaned down to whisper in his ear.
“And there goes your mate.”